Blog – Page 4 – Clementine Fraser

In previous posts I’ve talked about vulnerability and I’ve talked about mindfulness. I’ve suggested ways to increase resilience. Well, over the last few days I’ve been battling the clouds in my head and so I followed my own advice and I tried to work it all out. This is a vulnerable post – I’m sharing my thought processes with you to show you in a very real way how I try to kick out the demons. I didn’t mean to share two slightly gloomy posts in a row so I apologise to those who followed me for the upbeat motivation or the stories. But I believe that by sharing our vulnerable side we help ourselves, and we help others.

Below is word for word what I wrote. I started out just trying to purge in a catharsis of sorts but you will see where my brain kicked in and stopped me, rerouted the avalanche of words. This is, incidentally, why writing is so good for getting your emotions in order – the structure you impose when you write, the selection you make in the words and where you put them, helps you sort through your feelings more effectively perhaps than other ways of dealing with it. At the end of it I find I am not ragingly happy but my mind is no longer clogged with the clutter and debris of negativity. I have managed to impose some sense.

I hope by sharing my thought process with you, it might help you do the same if you ever need to.

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It’s hard when you feel so negative but you can’t do anything about it. The emotions just roil around, tumbling in your head and your chest, batting away the good thoughts and spreading out, making themselves at home.

Bad mum

Bad teacher

Crap writer

Shitty friend

No Time.

Not putting in the time

Forgetting things

Not making effort in the right way.

Not sticking to routine

Eating too much of the wrong things

Hating how you look, hating how unfit you are

Struggling to change

Okay, stop – focus on that last word – struggling.

Struggling is not a negative thing.

It is a human thing.

We all struggle.

We don’t always see other people’s struggles, but they have them.

Struggle doesn’t mean that you are rubbish or a loser, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t trying. Struggle means that you are trying and not succeeding. It implies effort. It implies desire.

Existence is a struggle.

A struggle to overcome.

A struggle to change

A struggle to improve.

These things are hard, they don’t happen without effort, and even with effort they don’t always fall into place easily.

Sometimes the only obstacle is you – your motivation or your distraction or your lack of self belief.

I think this is the hardest obstacle to overcome. The most difficult to struggle past.

So. Change the mindset.

First step.

Counter the stupid list.

You know these things to be true –

Good mum

Good teacher

Good writer

Good friend

Good person

You know these things you can fix –

Time but lots of things to fit into that time – have to be more organised.

Some things you do need to put more time into – figure them out and then do it.

Write some lists so you don’t forget

Enlist kids to help you enforce routines

You know these things you have to just do, even though they’re hard –

Eat better. This is tough but is one you just have to decide to do.

Stop hating on yourself. You know you actually like yourself really. Appearance is only one aspect of a person and you know that. You tell other people that all the time. Live by it.

Exercise. Then you won’t be unfit.

And yes, you feel lonely. Not all the time but sometimes. Remember that it is just waves and they will come and go and you will remain on the shore. Ride it out.

Let yourself struggle because struggle is ultimately progress. And any progress is good progress.

life, Personal, self care

When you suddenly feel sad

February 26, 2018November 4, 2025 Clementine Fraser

I’m mostly a happy and positive person. Sure, I lose my temper and get frustrated and fed up, but mostly I stay positive and cheerful. It’s part of how I see myself and how I present myself to the world.

But sometimes I get sad.

Sometimes I don’t know why I get sad. I just do.

It’s a dark cloud but I don’t feel it around my head, I feel it around my heart. It seems to constrict it, squeezing out the positivity and the optimism and the self love. It leaves behind a tainted mush that makes me feel unsettled.

Makes me feel sad.

It isn’t a big deal for me – I am fortunate that my sadness is not depression and I have a good life so it isn’t situational. Sometimes I just have waves of unhappy.

The thing about waves of sadness is that they’re just like waves of joy – they are transient. Both extremes wash over you, pulling you into the riptide or sometimes just lapping in the shallows. But they go. They might leave you surf battered, or in a beautiful floaty tranquility – but they go.

Sadness comes. It comes for all of us and we often don’t know why.

A friend once told me that sadness and happiness often don’t have a reason. They just are.

So what do you do while you wait for the tide to recede?

If it’s a particularly dark bout you might need to hang on to something or someone. Get some help to pull you back to shore.

If it’s the kind of sadness that makes you wonder if you need some sleep – you probably need more sleep.

Other things we can do to combat the sadness is to let it out – like writing this post – or combat it with active focus on the good things – like the Happy Jar, or talking with people we love.

I think, for me, the biggest thing is recognising sadness for what it is – an emotion that will come in, muck things up a bit, and then, after a short or long while, go away.

inspiration, Musings on Fiction and Tropes

Responsibility for our Actions – Lessons from Captain America: Civil War

February 24, 2018November 4, 2025 Clementine Fraser

I love action movies. Recently, though, I’ve really started noticing the destruction. I’ve started thinking about the impact on the rest of the people, wondering who gets to clean it up, who was in the car that flipped and spun into the oncoming truck. My mind tracks forward into the emergency rooms and onto the weeping families. I’ve wondered if perhaps it hits home a bit more because after increased bombings in many countries and the global connectedness we now share, it is no longer destruction that is limited to the ‘other’, to war, or to fantasy.

This is one of the reasons I love Captain America: Civil War. The whole movie, for me at least, focuses on choice and responsibility; whether to save the world you have to risk destroying it.

It begins with Wanda making a mistake that kills innocent civilians in Lagos in the fight to contain a biological weapon. This is closely followed by Tony Stark being confronted by the mother of a young man killed in the collateral damage of the fight against Ultron in Sokovia. This affects Tony greatly, leading him to tell the rest of the Avengers:

“he wanted to make a difference but we’ll never know because we dropped a building on him when we were kicking ass.”

He is not the only one to feel guilt. Wanda feels the responsibility of the deaths of innocents in Lagos deeply. A line that really struck me was when Steve says to Wanda:

‘we have to find a way to live with it, or maybe next time no-one gets saved.”

This brings up the idea of sacrifice – both in terms of collateral damage and sacrifice in terms of their peace of mind.

The movie then focuses on responsibility. This is something that I don’t often see addressed in big action movies where the excitement is in the bangs and the chases. The Avengers are forced to consider signing the Sokovia Accords, which would put them under a centralised international control. The debate over this reveals some great perspectives on personal and collective responsibility.

Tony argues for a higher power to give them limits.

“If we can’t accept limitations, we’re boundary less. We’re no better than the bad guys.”

I think we need to see this in the context of the actions he’s taken since becoming Iron Man. He is a man who used to take no responsibility or thought to where the weapons his company made ended up. When he became Iron Man he changed – He got rid of the arms manufacturing branch of the business, he was able to sacrifice himself for the good of the world, he saw the impact of his company’s actions in Avengers: Age of Ultron, while still going ahead and doing things without even the blessing of his team. He’s a complicated man and I think he knows that, for him, the security of someone else taking the responsibility by imposing limitations is welcome.

Captain America’s response shows a very different interpretation of responsibility:

“If someone dies on your watch you don’t give up. We are if we’re not taking responsibility for our actions. This document shifts the blame.”

He sees the Sokovia Accords as something that not only limits their actions but limits their responsibility. He’s happy with neither. This makes sense as he points out to Tony:

Steve: If i see a situation pointing south I can’t ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could

Tony: No you don’t.

Steve: No, I don’t.

This was seen before he even became Captain America when it was highlighted how he couldn’t let bullies continue without confronting them, even though he was tiny and weak and became their target.

The recurring theme that if you CAN do something you MUST do something is echoed when Tony recruits Spiderman. Peter says:

‘when you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.”

Jean Paul Sartre’s idea of absolute responsibility for one’s actions and how it relates to choice is something I have written about here. He argued that we have a burden of responsibility for our lives because we have individual freedom of consciousness, meaning that we can choose the way we feel, the way we behave, the things we do, even within a restrictive social framework. When you choose to be a bystander, when you could have done something, the responsibility for that lies on you. When you choose to not step in when you are the only one who could have done something that responsibility levels up.

Having a choice, having a conscience, means we need to act when we can. It also means we need to take responsibility for our actions – both good and bad.

life, Personal, self care, teaching

Building Relationships – Brick by Brick

February 21, 2018November 4, 2025 Clementine Fraser

Relationships, good, bad, professional, peripheral, are at the heart of human existence. I’m not even talking about romantic relationships, but the connections between us as humans. It is what drives community, positive workplaces, and is (I believe) central is giving us a sense of belonging and wellbeing.

I build relationships pretty easily. I really like people and I’m mostly fairly confident (or at least I seem so). I like to think I am kind. I’ve really focused on building relationships with students over the last decade of teaching – our students have a really strong appreciation and need for relationships with teachers. They need to know that you care, and that they have become a part of your extended community. So here are some of my top ideas for building positive strong relationships

Learn Names:

This is huge. Every year I have to learn about 150 new names in the first week of Term 1. I do it pretty quickly and feel terrible if I get a name wrong or I blank. Knowing and using a person’s name tells them that you think they’re important enough to remember. I once helped a boy on the playground when he was trying to make the right decision to not retaliate against a bully. I asked him his name. Every time I saw him after that I addressed him by name and we would stop and chat. It’s been two years and he still looks delighted every time I see him and say hi.

If you forget someone’s name, just ask. I had fantastic neighbours a few years ago. One particular wonderful couple my ex-husband and I would often chat to. We’d met up at a bar and introduced ourselves and would often say hi to Gregor over the fence. One day I came straight out with it. “Gregor, I’m so sorry but we’ve forgotten your partner’s name.” He looked intensely relieved: “Oh thank god because we’ve forgotten your husband’s name!”

Being honest about your forgetfulness and making a renewed effort to remember is appreciated. It builds relationships.

Be Welcoming:

I have always thought of myself as a friendly person, but I’ve become aware that in some situations I can appear quite intimidating or unwelcoming. I was at a writer’s conference and sat at a dinner table with a well known NYT bestseller of whom I am a MASSIVE fan. I watched her as she worked, very naturally, to put people at ease and ask them genuine questions about themselves, their writing, their lives. One of the women she was making feel welcome had sat next to me earlier and I’d only got as far as discussing her very fancy spectacles. Seeing how this author I admire so much put so much effort into connecting with this older woman made me question how much I had really tried to overcome my reserve and draw her out.

As a result, I try really hard with students to show a welcoming face when I see them around the school or they approach with a query. I don’t usually have to try hard, it’s more a case of remembering sometimes. None of us feel comfortable when people are (or appear to be) unwelcoming. It is hard to build relationships and connections when people are too nervous to talk to you.

friendship james-baldwin-276255-unsplash

Remember stuff about them:

The same top author whom I so admire remembered what I was writing about the next time she saw me. It made me feel like a million dollars.

When I remember what students do outside the classroom (sport, music, job) or even just remembering that they were doing a maths test that one time I relieved their class and making the time to ask them about it – that’s several bricks laid in the relationship build.

Showing people that you remember what is important to them shows them that they are important to you – such is the stuff that great relationships are made from.

It also gives you stuff to talk about!

As a teacher, it means when you’re in the playground and you need to move a group of boys on from playing ball where they shouldn’t, you can capitalise on the relationship you’ve made with a couple of them and they will get their mates to do what you’ve asked.

Listen to people:

I’m a talker. I always have been. My mother explained to me when I was young that if I was going to talk so much I had to become a good listener. Being a good listener to me means actively hearing what someone is saying. Letting go of the ‘waiting for my turn’ half tuned ear and giving someone your complete attention.

We all want to be heard.

Being a good listener also means noticing when people need you to stop talking.

Being a good listener also means noticing when people are trying to be heard or to speak and allowing them a space to do so.

Being a good listener means that you will become someone people feel comfortable opening up to. That openness and connection is integral to a good relationship.

Laugh with People:

Sharing a joke with someone builds an instant rapport, an instant connection. It breaks the ice and shows that you have more in common than you do otherwise. Crowded trains are normally silent places full of people ignoring each other. When I was in London I was on a train that was getting stopped constantly on the way into Earl’s Court. The driver started making jokes, snarky comments on the delay, silly puns. We all began laughing, and then we began chatting, and we were still laughing and chatting about it when we finally drew into Earl’s Court. Some people left and others hopped on. The new people couldn’t quite understand why we were all so cheerful and relaxed. More than one looked as if they were wondering if they’d stumbled into a private carriage. Humour builds connections.

I use humour a lot in the classroom. I do it without thinking, but it is something that I recommend to other teachers. I’ve often said that our boys in particular really need you to have a joke with them. This is not to say that you aren’t firm and hold to your boundaries – they want you to be strict but they also want to know that you will laugh at their stupid jokes, that you will make stupid jokes and crack up yourself. Humour is a great equaliser.

Be an encourager:

Build people up. Support them. Encourage them and help them to reach their potential. Cheer them on. Don’t sabotage their goals. I think that’s fairly self explanatory.

Be kind:

Those of you who have followed my blog will know that kindness is really important to me. We crave kindness. If you show consistent kindness to people that’s the majority of the battle to build and maintain a relationship won. It is the kindness that I showed to students that keeps them coming back year after year to say hi, even after they leave.

Be vulnerable:

It’s okay to show that you aren’t perfect. It’s okay to show that you don’t have all the answers. It’s okay to not have the amazing Instagram ready life. It’s okay to be vulnerable. My friends and my family know that I am not a perfect person. They know that I can have a temper, that I am disorganised, that I don’t always have the best self-esteem. They have seen me cry. Vulnerability is authentic. It is an equaliser. It allows for a completely honest relationship.

Relationships give us a lot but to get the most out of them we need to put the effort in.